Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Writers and Artists

Michael Nava was born in 1954 in Stockton, California. His family
soon moved to a barrio in Sacramento in search of employment
and a better life. A precocious and sensitive child, Nava spent
more and more time reading in the library as he grew older to escape his
stepfather’s violent hand, which shot sharply through the air of a oneroom, breeze-block home in the barrio. Nava survived with the help of
teachers and books; there was no place for him in this dysfunctional,
patriarchal household— especially once he reached puberty and identified as gay. After winning a scholarship, Nava made tracks for Colorado
College, where he earned a B.A. in English. After traveling to Spain and
Argentina (during the 1970s and the great tragedy of the desaparecidos, or
“Disappeared”), Nava returned home with the intent of studying law. In
1981, with a J.D. from Stanford under his belt—and a couple of poetry
prizes—Nava began to practice as a prosecutor in Los Angeles. By night,
however, he continued to hone his craft as a novelist of detective fiction.

In 1986, Michael Nava published his first mystery novel, The Little Death,
breathing life into the first gay Chicano lawyer-cum-detective, Henry Rios.
Nava hasn’t stopped to look back since, churning out seven more awardwinning novels that fully contour Rios’s life as he solves grisly murders and
crimes against the disenfranchised, has affairs of the heart, and struggles
with the constant loss of friends and lovers to AIDS. Rios encounters a
world filled with bigotry that rears its ugly head when it comes to queers and
Chicanos/as: a world that outlaws those who are darker of hue, the working
class, and people with a different sexuality, often paralyzing them with fear

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